Photo of mom potty-training kids at restaurant table sparks outrage

A Utah mom had people’s jaws dropping when she potty-trained her twins in the middle of a restaurant.

Kimberly Decker was one of those restaurant patrons who was shocked when she saw the incident take place at the Thanksgiving Point Deli in Utah. Decker snapped a photo and posted it on Facebook, according to KNTX-TV. The photo went viral and has appeared on television news stations across the country.

Decker says the mother in question lugged portable potties into the restaurant, placed them on chairs and sat her children down on them. At first Decker thought the potties were booster seats but when the mother stripped off her children’s clothes, she realized the twins were going to the bathroom—in the middle of the restaurant in front of other diners.

“She had to undo the jumpsuits, and take them all the way down so they were completely nude, with the jumpsuits down to their ankles just eating their chicken nuggets, sitting on little toddler potties,” Decker told KSL-TV.

Any parent knows that potty-training a toddler is tricky and tiresome. Moms and dads go to extremes to help their children give up diapers, often carrying portable potties in car trunks so they can easily pull over and let kids do their business on the roadside. Or when you’re at a playground without toilets, a portable potty comes in handy. But should portable potties be used in plain view in public places? Definitely not! You take your kid behind a tree or if you’re in a restaurant, you take your child to the bathroom. Or better yet, you keep your kid at home until he’s potty-trained.

Decker told KSL-TV that she had recently stayed at home for several days with her own child to help him learn to use the potty, and she was baffled that this other mother was bringing this private matter into a restaurant.

“The more you thought about it, the more unappetizing everything looked around me,” Decker said. “I was like this is not ok, we’re eating, there was a business meeting with about five or six businessmen going on right next to me. The place was packed.”

Thanksgiving Point Deli received complaints from customers. “I think state and local health codes were probably an issue, as well as just social norms,” Erica Brown, a spokeswoman for the deli, told KSL-TV.

The names of the mother and her twins are unknown, which is probably for the best. These poor children don’t need to be further humiliated and have their names attached to a naked photo of themselves going potty at a dining table. You have to question whether Decker made the right choice in posting the photo online.